The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook: More Than 200 Fibers, from Animal to Spun Yarn

Carol Ekarius, Deborah Robson

This one-of-a-kind encyclopedia shines a spotlight on more than 200 animals and their wondrous fleece. Profiling a worldwide array of fiber-producers that includes northern Africa’s dromedary camel, the Navajo churro, and the Tasmanian merino, Carol Ekarius and Deborah Robson include photographs of each animal’s fleece at every stage of the handcrafting process, from raw to cleaned, spun, and woven. The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook is an artist’s handbook, travel guide, and spinning enthusiast’s ultimate reference source all in one.

yet there is no particular pattern to the white. Derbyshire Gritstones are polled (or hornless) in both sexes. 40 PART 1 Blackfaced Mountain Family Grown primarily for meat, Derbyshire Gritstones nonetheless produce a versatile ﬂeece that warrants, and rewards, exploration by people who work with ﬁber by hand (including felters, who ﬁnd it to have the best feltability of the Blackfaced Mountain family). Consistent, dense, and with enough crimp to give yarns good loft and resilience, Gritstone

in that role, although not of luxury texture. Best known for. White, bouncy wool. Larger sheep than the southern Cheviots; there are three distinct strains within the breed. North Country Cheviot 59 D o r s et H or n D 60 PART 1 Cheviot Family er or p h air , a sh s D or th e n i e ep ro et g up Dorset GROUP N otice that we don’t call this a family! It’s a group of like-named sheep, but they aren’t all kissin’ cousins. There are essentially two breeds of sheep with Dorset in

Fleece weights range from 10 to 14½ pounds (4.5–6.6 kg), and staples are about 4 inches (10 cm) long. Fonthill Merino. An Australian type that was developed from a cross of American Rambouillet rams and Saxon Merinos, intended for both wool and meat purposes. The goal has been to keep wool production the same as for other Merinos while increasing the amount of meat produced per animal. We found no speciﬁc information on ﬂeece weights or staple lengths, other than that they are like those of other

used. Is that 56s a Bradford count or a USDA grade? Unfortunately, it is hard to know, unless the source you’re looking at speciﬁcally says Bradford or USDA. Where we give numbers in the style of Bradford or USDA grades, we generally call them spinning counts. This acknowledges the fact that people still ﬁnd these designations useful, although our information sources were frequently unclear about which of these systems they were using. In a few cases, when a source did specify, we have kept the